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XMeet the Space Startups That Make Up SCALE Aerospace Ventures' Inaugural Cohort

A jet designer that aims to make supersonic flight available to the masses, a durable 3-D printer maker and a company trying to improve post-disaster and space communication are among SCALE Aerospace Ventures' 2021 accelerator cohort.
Eight aerospace companies that are working on next-frontier technologies were tapped for the 13-week virtual program that kicks off on Monday, May 10. A joint partnership of UCLA and Starburst Aerospace, the accelerator is designed to help pre-seed and seed stage aerospace startups find their market fit, develop products, and secure funding through mentorship and workshops.
"We often see many of the new ideas that truly propel the aerospace and defense industries forward come from young startups," said Francois Chopard, founder and CEO of Starburst Aerospace."We believe in this new cohort and are looking forward to the cutting-edge innovation that will develop from this collaboration."
Starburst runs multiple aerospace accelerators all over the world in cities like Paris and Tel Aviv.
It is no surprise that Starburst is investing in Los Angeles, known to many as the aerospace capital of the world, consisting of more than 25 aerospace companies including SpaceX. Earlier this year, the U.S. Space Force announced it would establish its acquisitions and technology division in the Los Angeles area this summer.
This program was granted $1.4 million by the U.S. Economic Development Administration to develop SCALE Aerospace Ventures.
Here are the startups slated to join the accelerator this summer:
Atomus logo
Atomus
With a team originating from University of Southern California, Atomus works to protect companies from cyberattacks when they share technical data packages for manufacturing. The startup's technology is already being used by the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Air Force and the Defense Innovation Unit.
Exosonic logo
Exosonic
Loud sonic booms from supersonic aircraft prevent passenger planes from traveling at supersonic speed. Exosonic has developed a low-boom supersonic jet capable of carrying 70 passengers, transforming commercial aviation while remaining conscious of its carbon footprint.
Craitor logo
Craitor
The company's 3D printing system is designed to withstand extreme temperatures and water, unlike competitors. Craitor's capabilities made it attractive to the U.S. Marine Corp, which is working with the company on the development through units at Camp Pendleton, Twenty Nine Palms. It is also working with the Navy through the San Diego Naval Base.
Rebel Space Technologies Logo
Rebel Space Technologies
Headquartered in Long Beach, the startup provides secure radio communication in difficult environments such as space or post-disaster. Rebel Space Technologies leverages AI software and advanced signal analysis.
Rhoman Aerospace Logo
Rhoman Aerospace
Los Angeles-based Rhoman Aerospace is developing flight control software for drones. The software aims to increase traditional flight time and provide safety measures that will help open doors for commercial scale drone operations.
Black Arrow Logo
Black Arrow
Black Arrow: This startup focuses on creating more options for companies utilizing data labeling and calibration so they no longer have to rely solely on manual labeling by in-house or international labeling teams.
Axion Ray
Axion Ray
This startup is currently in stealth mode, but according to AngelList, it develops "AI to accelerate engineering of next-gen & electric automotive/aerospace vehicles."
Metaspectral
This startup applies photo compression technology to spectral images, which captures light across the electromagnetic spectrum. Metaspectral's technology compresses these large images down to as little as 30% of their original size, which makes the evaluation of the images and data more efficient.
Editor's note: This story has been updated. An earlier version incorrectly stated Techstars is affiliated with Starburst.
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Office Hours: Rep. Derek Kilmer on How Social Media Influences Politics
Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.
U.S. House Representative Derek Kilmer spoke with Office Hours host Spencer Rascoff to discuss the select committee on the modernization of Congress and how social media has changed the political landscape.
A former businessman, Kilmer has held the seat of Washington's sixth congressional district since 2013. He previously served as a member of the Washington House of Representatives and the Washington State Senate. Kilmer also chairs the select committee on the modernization of Congress, which features six Democrats and six Republicans and is charged with making Congress more effective and efficient. The committee does not limit speakers to five-minute speaking slots, which he said helps prevent people from making statements solely for soundbites intended for social media.
The potential to go viral has increased the reward for making inflammatory statements on social media. Kilmer likens the political landscape to a row boat; everyone should be rowing in the same direction. But currently, he said, about half of Congress row in one direction while the other half row the opposite way, and “about 10% of the people in the boat have their oars out of the water just actively beating the heck out of everybody else in the boat,” he added. “That's a problem that is unfortunately amplified and exacerbated by social media and cable news.”
One change Kilmer’s committee has recommended is introducing a physical space in the House where Democrats and Republicans can meet outside of media observation. While this exists in the Senate, he said the House currently lacks a neutral space where lawmakers can meet unobserved. Such a space, he said, would promote bipartisan cooperation and help facilitate dialogue between the parties.
“One of my key takeaways from having chaired this committee on trying to fix Congress is there's no silver bullet to making the institution work better for the American people,” Kilmer said. “I think it's more like silver buckshot—there's a whole bunch of stuff that we've got to do to modernize the institution to get it more focused on the needs of the American people.”
Want to hear more episodes? Subscribe to Office Hours on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radioor wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Editorial Intern Kristin Snyder contributed to this post.
Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.
These SoCal Startups Are Getting Ahead of the Game Via Comcast’s Sports Tech Accelerator
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
A few years ago, language translation startup LetzChat learned that there was a big need for its services in the sports world.
It can take hours, if not days, for a human to translate a given contest’s closed captioned subtitles, depending on the language—and by that point, most fans no longer care about the game in question. But LetzChat’s technology translates subtitles within minutes after the final whistle, co-founder and CEO Jordan Orlick told dot.LA. In 2020, the company inked a deal with the NFL to translate on-demand videos for America’s most popular sports league.
Now, the Westlake Village-based firm is working with some of the biggest names in sports broadcasting, from NBC Sports and the Golf Channel to WWE. Those pilot agreements are the result of LetzChat’s participation in Comcast and NBCUniversal’s SportsTech Accelerator program, which just recently wrapped up. The 12-week program in Atlanta connected 10 startups—including four from Southern California—with executives at the media giant and its sports partners, who mentored those companies’ founders.
Besides LetzChat, the other local participants were Newport Beach’s Ice Cream Social, a platform that helps companies turn customers into brand advocates; Los Angeles-based Movrs, which uses AI to generate biometric data without wearable sensors; and San Diego’s Meetlete, which enables video chats between fans and their favorite athletes.
For these startups, the benefits of the SportsTech Accelerator appear obvious: Founders get one-on-one time with leaders at the likes of NASCAR, the PGA Tour and U.K.-based Sky Sports, who help them flesh out their business ideas and scale their operations if they secure deals with the big brands. But the accelerator also offers Comcast and its partners an early lens into the next generation of innovations in sports tech; the cable giant and Boomtown, a Colorado company that designs and operates accelerator programs, split $50,000 investments into each startup in the program.
“Our connection to sports runs really deep,” Jenna Kurath, Comcast’s vice president of startup partnerships told dot.LA. “It just made a lot of sense for us to be on the forefront of working with startups to bring new fan experiences.”
LetzChat, for example, could help the media conglomerate across many parts of its enterprise. The Comcast-owned Golf Channel, for instance, sits on a “treasure trove” of historical footage that could reach a broader audience if translated to multiple languages, Kurath said. Sky, the European pay-TV provider, could cut costs by using LetzChat’s language dubbing services, as well.
Comcast has also pushed LetzChat to work on applying its technology to local TV and regional sports content, much of which ends up on digital platforms these days. There is currently no regulatory requirement to include closed captioning for such content, Kurath said, but that could change in the future.
“If we can challenge LetzChat to see if that same technology could be used [for regional content], then we can get ahead of what will probably be a mandatory requirement coming up soon,” she said.
Founded in 2010, LetzChat only recently became a rising player in sports. In addition to video subtitles, the 10-person company quickly translates online chats and businesses’ websites into a customer’s language. Its clients include fast food restaurants and auto dealership software companies, according to Orlick.
But sports is now a huge pillar for the business. The startup plans to translate its first live game for the NFL this year and has secured at least 11 deals—mostly pilot agreements—with the Comcast accelerator’s partners. One of them is with WWE; the pro wrestling promotion is interested in LetzChat’s recent forays into deepfake technology, which could make it look like its wrestlers are speaking different languages with their own voices, Orlick said.
“All of these companies in the sports world are the top-of-the-top,” he said. “We don't have the level of access to these partners without the [SportsTech Accelerator] program.”
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Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Meet the New Santa Barbara Venture Fund Eyeing Software Startups
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Samson is also a proud member of the Transgender Journalists Association. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
A new venture fund based up the 101 isn’t letting the current market slowdown curb its appetite for new software startups.
Santa Barbara Venture Partners has officially closed its first, $11 million investment fund, the company told dot.LA, with the primary goal of backing software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies based predominantly in Southern California.
The Santa Barbara-based firm was founded in 2020 by former tech entrepreneur Dan Engel, who said that he looks to invest in companies that can weather the storms of tumultuous capital markets. SBVP claims a strict set of criteria for its portfolio companies; Engel said it won’t invest unless a startup can prove it’s already conquered product-market fit and is generating at least $3 million in annual revenue, with an emphasis on companies with subscription-based revenue models and annual growth rates of at least 75%.
“We invest at a stage when product-market fit has already been figured out,” Engel told dot.LA. “We don't want to take that risk, because too many times it doesn't end up getting figured out, and an investor ends up with a goose-egg zero.”
The firm plans to invest in startups that are anywhere from the seed stage up to their Series D round, and which have the potential to deliver a 3x-to-6x return in at least a seven-year time span, Engel added.
“We try to invest in businesses that are really hard to screw up,” Engel noted, half-jokingly.
So far, SBVP has backed nine companies out of its debut fund with an average check size of about $850,000, according to Engel. The fund recently saw its first exit via San Diego-based nonprofit fundraising platform Classy, which raised $118 million in a Series D round last year before being acquired by GoFundMe this January.
While he’s cautious about backing companies that don’t have a clear track record of growth, Engel did say he’s optimistic about the current state of the tech startup environment despite increasingly sluggish market conditions. He noted particular optimism about SBVP’s chosen software market.
“Every time SaaS is down, it comes roaring back up,” Engel asserted. “It's got real advantages to it as an investment—such as having the ability to weather storms that others can’t, [like] much more capital-intensive businesses that don't have predictable recurring revenue.”
Still, there is at least one company in the SBVP portfolio that’s been directly affected by stagnating IPO markets—with Classy originally planning to go public before opting to shelve its Nasdaq ambitions
“The M&A market I don't think is too different at the moment; maybe multiples are down a little bit. The IPO market is certainly on hold at the moment, and that affects us too,” said Engel, who worked in customer acquisition and marketing for the likes of Google before co-founding Santa Barbara-based fintech software startup FastSpring. He also served as FastSpring’s CEO prior to its 2013 acquisition by L.A.-based investment firm Pylon Capital.
Other recent SBVP investments include Hydrosat, a satellite thermal imaging company that graduated from Techstars’ aerospace accelerator in Los Angeles; and Berkeley-based Voltaiq, which makes software to analyze the efficiency of electric vehicle batteries. The remaining investments from the new fund include Bark Technologies, Specright, Nice Healthcare, Jackpocket, Rad AI and Curri. Engel said over 70% of the fund is already invested, including via sidecar deals.
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Samson is also a proud member of the Transgender Journalists Association. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him